Help, Tips and Tricks for Bambies (if you're new to the game)

[Art Blade]

Dev's log: http://dayzdev.tumblr.com/
[smg id=6970 type=preview align=center caption="DayZ Logo"]

The game is survival, not killing players.

Hello guys :)

A player whose character spawns for the first time or after dying is called a Bambi but it also applies to players who are absolutely new to the game and have got no clue whatsoever how to play DayZ.

I want to compile some tips and tricks here, so feel free to add your suggestions and questions  :)



First of all, here are two (more or less identical) online maps with loot information, you'll want to know where you are and where to go.

http://dayzdb.com/map#4.128.059

http://www.dayztv.com/map/#3.087.080
[smg id=6967 type=preview align=center caption="DayZ Bambi 01"]
You'll spawn somewhere on the coast, currently (alpha 0.44 / May 2014) on the East coast and likely to the North, close to Berenzino or the town Chernaya Polyana that hasn't been named on those maps yet (it's the settlement that's shaped like a triangle or a shark's tooth, North of the NE airstrip) but it may also be somewhere down the coastline.



[smg id=6968 type=preview align=center caption="DayZ Bambi 02"]
The first thing you should do is to use TAB to open your inventory, drag your shirt to the left ("vicinity") part of your inventory and right mouse click on it to tear it to rags and drag those into your trouser's pockets on the right of the inventory. Now you've got makeshift bandages which you will need not long after spawning.. it is to stop bleeding after you got injured fighting zombies.
[smg id=6969 type=preview align=center caption="DayZ Bambi 03"]
You might just as well throw the battery and the torch away because you won't be running around at night much, anyway, and it takes up precious storage room. If you want to keep them, drag the battery over the torch to craft a working torch that you need your hands for (lower part of the inventory) and there you can right-click it to switch it on and off. In order to shine around with it, press spacebar once to bring up your hands (it's a toggle).

You can drag and drop any item from your inventory onto the hotkey bar at the bottom of your screen. The hotkeys are assigned to the number keys 1-0 (not the numpad ones) so you can just press the key to take the item assigned to it into your hands. Dragging and dropping one item from the hotkey bar onto itself will clear the hotkey.

Fighting: With or without weapons, you'll have to press spacebar to bring up your fists or the weapon in your hands, only then the left mouse button will w@&k as a trigger to fire or punch or swing.

Toggle first person and third person view with Enter

Run: double-tap W. Walk: press W. You run fastest with bare hands.

Check the menu and key bindings to see what there is, it's a lot of stuff. Best stick to default key bindings so you can ask other people or use this help topic.

You'll start hungry and thirsty. DON'T eat rotten food, it will make you sick and you'll die, unless you find charcoal tablets to cure it.

Any sharp tool or weapon can open tins. Look out for screw drivers, bayonets, axes.. ultimately find a tin opener.

You can zoom even without weapon by pressing your right mouse button.

Loot can be tiny and you'll likely miss a lot of stuff by just looking around. You will find more and quicker if you open your inventory and then walk around using WSAD. Stuff that is in your vicinity will show up on your left side of your inventory. Loot can be under tables or beds or on top of lockers and shelves or in the middle.. use crouch and stand up to check for different areas with your inventory open.

There is food that doesn't need tools like tuna and sardine tins, rice, milk powder, cereal crisps and fruit.

Eat and drink lots, until you see a bright green ENERGIZED and HYDRATED in your inventory. At that stage, you'll start to heal (it reads HEALING) and eventually you'll see "HEALTHY" -- keep a close eye on those stats.

You can drink from wells and ponds, soda cans, bottles and canteens. To drink from a pond, crouch and use first person view (toggle third and fist person tapping Enter)

Kill zombies by aiming at their heads and try to get to their sides rather than frontally because they'll lunge at you frontally.

Walk crouched to significantly reduce noise.

Avoid other players -- consider all of them "bandits" that will kill you, torture you, rob you.. be VERY careful if you see or hear other players. If in doubt, hit ESC and disconnect from the server.

To voice-chat in game press CAPS LOCK. It can be heard by nearby players but not across the entire map.

If you die, you lose everything. You will start over on a beach, almost naked.. a Bambi.

You cannot save your game. All player data is being stored in one "hive" server. If you quit your game, the hive will remember your entire character, gear, position.. so if you restart the game and join any server, you'll start where you left, with all your gear and all your hunger, thirst etc.

Be careful when looting, there may already be players in the building you could run into. Usually doors are closed, so if you see many buildings and all of them have their doors wide open, someone has been here before you. Avoid the coast and places near spawning points because there are "bandits" that kill Bambies for fun. They kill kitted-out players to rob their loot. They can spoil your game entirely. So, the more crowded the server you're on, the more likely there will be bandits in hot spots such as airfields, military bases, popular towns such as Berenzino and Electro. You really don't want to run into someone who looks like me in this pic but even I don't want to run into anyone. The game is survival, not killing players.
[smg id=6971 type=preview align=center caption="DayZ caution"]

the devs have added new spawn points, so you don't always spawn on the coast.

You can also refill any water bottle/canteen from any pond/well you find by putting it in your hands, selecting first person (pressing enter) and then click your mouse wheel. You will then see on the left of your screen some yellow text giving you the option to scroll up/down with mouse wheel to choose 'fill bottle'.

If you find ammo it can be combined by dragging it from your inventory on top of the other similar ammo up to it's maximum amount.

I thought that 'fighting zombies' for bambi's could be explained a bit.

• Decide if you are going to fight the zombies, run from them or stealthily avoid them (they have good hearing and good peripheral vision). They run fast, so make sure you do too! You can look over your shoulder using 1 and 2 on your number pad whilst running away. To outrun them try and get out of their line of sight (run behind walls, houses or bushes and trees)
• Always fight in first person mode (press enter)
• If you haven't managed to loot any type of weapon, use your fists. (press space bar to raise them, left mouse to hit/shoot)
• Aim for the head
• Time your hits and avoid their 'lunges' (can be useful to keep sidestepping around them)
• They can be knocked out for a few seconds (they lie face down as opposed to killed, face up)
• To exploit a current bug, run down a steep slope and the chasing zombies will fall over and die 
• Currently the Fire Axe is the strongest melee weapon  8)
• You will be made to bleed so make sure you have plenty of bandages!  :o
• After you kill them and you've stopped bleeding  :-D, check your inventory to see if they have 'ruined' any of your gear >:(

How to get geared out:
After you've spawned and have created some rags, it's most important to get FOOD, INVENTORY SPACE and eventually WEAPONRY. To get food and space for your inventory you'll need to go to whatever urban area. Best is to go to the nearest small village or town and cautiously explore the buildings around. Make sure you check the bigger (preferable stone) buildings, because the small wooden shacks and houses usually contain nothing.
Very important is to grow the space in your inventory by finding clothes and backpacks. You will almost always find some of these items in villages, but be careful for the zombies and, indeed, other players.
Once you have more room to stack away what you find, go to a military base or airfield. There you will find a lot of fire weapons and ammo, which will keep you last longer.

A small tip concerning melee fighting the zombies:
I tend to kill them all with my bare fists until I found firearms. That is because the fists are more accurate when it comes to timing your punches. More than once I've been struggling with an axe to hit the head of the zombie, or other melee stuff you might find like shovels, pipe wrenches or even baseball bats. Whatever weapon you use, it's important to aim for the head. That's complicated when your strike with the axe hits the target half a second after your pressed LMB.

I usually don't care much for the bandits when I just spawned. I don't care if they kill me before I collected the most basic needs, but as soon as I am kitted out a bit, I start to become more cautious. One last tip about human presence in the game; if there's zombies around there will probably not be other players around. The zombies get immediately triggered by players and it's nearly impossible to loot a village avoiding their sharp eyes and ears.  And remember; a lot of players like to survive instead of killing bambies and survivors. Especially when you are in a quiet server (up to 10, 12 players) you will probably run into other friendlies. Reading all the complaints about foolish bandit players might give the idea that any human presence is a threat. I've run into a bunch of friendly players already, and have only experienced other players shooting at me 2 or 3 times.

This post will be edited frequently. More to come, hope this gets you started :)

[Abletile]

Nice tips!

One correction is that now the devs have added new spawn points, so you don't always spawn on the coast.
You can also refill any water bottle/canteen from any pond/well you find by putting it in your hands, selecting first person (pressing enter) and then click your mouse wheel. You will then see on the left of your screen some yellow text giving you the option to scroll up/down with mouse wheel to choose 'fill bottle'.
If you find ammo it can be combined by dragging it from your inventory on top of the other similar ammo up to it's maximum amount.

More to come..............

[PZ]

What a great idea for a tips section - I feel like I could actually go into the game ans survive for more than a minute or two.

Nice... +1  :-X

PS: I saw that you need ArmA II for the mod to w@&k - is there any specific version of ArmA II?

[Art Blade]

Thanks  :)

I don't know about the mod.

Just not to confuse readers, the standalone (SA) version is a game on its own, not a mod, it stands alone, but the idea behind it was indeed an ARMA II mod with the same name. That's why this here is SA to differentiate. The author of both the mod and SA is the same guy, Dean "Rocket" Hall.

[Art Blade]

By the way, I'll keep editing/updating the first post in this topic so you guys don't have to read hundreds of posts  ;)

[PZ]

Just not to confuse readers, the standalone (SA) version is a game on its own, not a mod, it stands alone, but the idea behind it was indeed an ARMA II mod with the same name. That's why this here is SA to differentiate. The author of both the mod and SA is the same guy, Dean "Rocket" Hall.

That's good to know.  I did a Google search for "DayZ" and arrived at a site which looked like the right thing, but mentioned that you need ArmA II.  I then did a search for "DayZ stand alone" and managed to navigate to the proper place.

[Abletile]

I thought that 'fighting zombies' for bambi's could be explained a bit.

• Decide if you are going to fight the zombies, run from them or stealthily avoid them (they have good hearing and good peripheral vision). They run fast, so make sure you do too! You can look over your shoulder using 1 and 2 on your number pad whilst running away. To outrun them try and get out of their line of sight (run behind walls, houses or bushes and trees)
• Always fight in first person mode (press enter)
• If you haven't managed to loot any type of weapon, use your fists. (press space bar to raise them, left mouse to hit/shoot)
• Aim for the head
• Time your hits and avoid their 'lunges' (can be useful to keep sidestepping around them)
• They can be knocked out for a few seconds (they lie face down as opposed to killed, face up)
• To exploit a current bug, run down a steep slope and the chasing zombies will fall over and die 
• Currently the Fire Axe is the strongest melee weapon  8)
• You will be made to bleed so make sure you have plenty of bandages!  :o
• After you kill them and you've stopped bleeding  :-D, check your inventory to see if they have 'ruined' any of your gear >:(

[Art Blade]

added that to the starting post, nice one. :)

[Binnatics]

Nice tips guys!! Good w@&k!

I'd like to add a small piece of info about what to do first:

How to get geared out:
After you've spawned and have created some rags, it's most important to get FOOD, INVENTORY SPACE and eventually WEAPONRY. To get food and space for your inventory you'll need to go to whatever urban area. Best is to go to the nearest small village or town and cautiously explore the buildings around. Make sure you check the bigger (preferable stone) buildings, because the small wooden shacks and houses usually contain nothing.
Very important is to grow the space in your inventory by finding clothes and backpacks. You will almost always find some of these items in villages, but be careful for the zombies and, indeed, other players.
Once you have more room to stack away what you find, go to a military base or airfield. There you will find a lot of fire weapons and ammo, which will keep you last longer.

A small tip concerning melee fighting the zombies:
I tend to kill them all with my bare fists until I found firearms. That is because the fists are more accurate when it comes to timing your punches. More than once I've been struggling with an axe to hit the head of the zombie, or other melee stuff you might find like shovels, pipe wrenches or even baseball bats. Whatever weapon you use, it's important to aim for the head. That's complicated when your strike with the axe hits the target half a second after your pressed LMB.


I usually don't care much for the bandits when I just spawned. I don't care if they kill me before I collected the most basic needs, but as soon as I am kitted out a bit, I start to become more cautious. One last tip about human presence in the game; if there's zombies around there will probably not be other players around. The zombies get immediately triggered by players and it's nearly impossible to loot a village avoiding their sharp eyes and ears.  And remember; a lot of players like to survive instead of killing bambies and survivors. Especially when you are in a quiet server (up to 10, 12 players) you will probably run into other friendlies. Reading all the complaints about foolish bandit players might give the idea that any human presence is a threat. I've run into a bunch of friendly players already, and have only experienced other players shooting at me 2 or 3 times.

^-^

[Art Blade]

Added. :)

I can only hope that advertising that server and telling everyone where we are won't backfire. For instance, ever heard of stream sniping? Someone records his live gameplay and simultaneously streams it. Some people watch the live stream while joining the server the guy recording it is on. Now they see what he sees, where he is, and home in on him.. and bang, kill him. That is cheap, low-life, beyond comprehension, and cheating. Announcing the server may be good for friendlies but may also help bandits spoil it for us. You mentioned the server before. In case you reconsider, you can still remove that information.

[PZ]

Definitely a concern - I've heard GTA-V players are waiting for other gamers to accumulate money, kill the other character, then steal the $.  They think it funny.

Too bad that kind of gaming exists.  I would not mind if all that kind of gamer were on the same server, and all gamers like us were on a server different from them.